Metabarcoding approach for nonindigenous species surveillance in marine coastal waters

Anastasija Zaiko,Aurelija Samuiloviene,Alba Ardura,Eva Garcia-Vazquez

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.09.030

Anastasija Zaiko, Aurelija Samuiloviene + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.09.030

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Abstract

In this study, high-throughput sequencing (HTS) metabarcoding was applied for the surveillance of plankton communities within the southeastern (SE) Baltic Sea coastal zone. These results were compared with those from routine monitoring survey and morphological analyses. Four of five nonindigenous species found in the samples were identified exclusively by metabarcoding. All of them are considered as invasive in the Baltic Sea with reported impact on the ecosystem and biodiversity. This study indicates that, despite some current limitations, HTS metabarcoding can provide information on the presence of exotic species and advantageously complement conventional approaches, only requiring the same monitoring effort as before. Even in the currently immature status of HTS, this combination of HTS metabarcoding and observational records is recommended in the early detection of marine pests and delivery of the environmental status metrics of nonindigenous species.

Highlights

We present a pilot application of metabarcoding approach for the non-indigenous species (NIS) surveillance in zooplankton communities
In our study we challenged the hypothesis if metabarcoding in combination with High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS) could provide consistent results with those obtained from the routine monitoring programs, without exceeding the regular sampling effort
For the HTS analysis we employed the universal c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene as a molecular marker because sequence data of this gene are amongst the most voluminous components of the public databases (Medlin and Kooistra 2010; Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007), as commented above it can be expected that some taxonomic groups may be overlooked with this marker (Creer et al 2010; Tang et al 2012; Zhan et al 2014)